Vickie Howell(Boho Rope Baskets, Knitted Wall Hanging) is a cultivator of craft and community. She’s an award-winning broadcast personality, producer, author, designer, and instructor in the D.I.Y. world with a penchant for motivational speaking, and social media marketing.Her 2018 People’s Telly Award Winning and Webby Award Honoree and ground-breaking series, “The Knit Show with Vickie Howell.” (YouTube) is the first studio-funded, community funded, internationally accessible knitting and crochet streaming series. With the help of over 1200 individual and company backers, Vickie successfully raised 83k in 30 days on Kickstarter towards funding the project. As of December 2017, there have been over a quarter million views by people in at least 19 accounted for countries.Vickie is well-known as the Host of TV shows such as DIY Network’s Knitty Gritty and Stylelicious, her best selling knitting, crochet, and craft books, and her accessible, inclusive approach to nurturing the creative community via print, video and social media.Vickie’s designs and projects have been included in hundreds of publications worldwide including her celebrity column for Knit.1 Magazine (in which she interviewed the likes of Actress Tori Spelling, Singer Lisa Loeb, Designer Isaac Mizrahi, etc), the Eco-Craft column she wrote for 3 years for Kiwi Magazine, the 2009 Lands’ End FeelGood Campaign (of which she was the spokesperson for), her blog column Craft Apparent for PBS Parents and weekly articles for iLovetoCreate.com, and regular columns in both Knit Simple and Interweave Crochet Magazines. Over the course of her career, she’s continued to rally the crafty troops as an internationally recognized blogger & magazine columnist; a Spokesperson and Ambassador for major brands like Patons, Bernat, Caron, Land’s End, Clover Needlecrafts, and Visible Mobile; host of video campaigns for companies such as HGTV, JoAnn, Ragu, Cannon, Inkjoy, andTuesday Morning; and as the Host and Co-Executive Producer of PBS’ Knitting Daily TV with Vickie Howell.Vickie strives to motivate and inspire people to both live creatively and make a living being creative — most recently reaching out to people via her Facebook Live series (the first and longest-running of its kind in the genre), Ask Me Monday, her online courses for CreativeLiveand Brit+Co., her podcast, Craft*ish, and her subscription box business, YarnYAY!, which has sold out almost every month since it’s launch.Follow all of Vickie’s projects on social media. You can find her @vickiehowell everywhere except Pinterest, where she’s @iamvickiehowell.

Nikyle Wes (Navajo Wedge Weaving, Navajo Spinning)I, Nikyle, have been weaving since my childhood. Weaving is the root of my family's culture, I learned by observing my grandmother. A lot of my earliest memories are tagging along with her to tend to the sheep or watching her spin yarn and weaving. I will share my knowledge, passion and traditional stories of spinning yarn with the students who sign up. The classes I have taught have a positive, relaxed atmosphere, giving students the chance to fully enjoy the Flagstaff Wool Festival, to explore the surrounding area and to meditate, that way only harmony is channeled into your spinning and weaving.

Yá'át'ééh ,I'm Zefren Anderson (Navajo Irregular Twill Weaving) I grew out in Tó’koí (Rattlesnake) NM and live in Shiprock,NM. I’m Navajo belonging to the Mud clan, and born for the Many houses. I’ve been around weaving all my life and I was told of the blankets and rugs that used to be woven on both side of my family. Recently after a few years of recreating older styles of Navajo Clothing I wanted to learn what Navajos wore before Contact. This curiosity led me to an apprenticeship with Master weaver Roy Kady, and Dine College’s Navajo cultural Arts program. The experiences led me to reconnect with weaving from both sides of my family, from the Mesas of two grey hills, to the stories of our origins in the Mesa Verde group on my father’s side of the family. Using the family oral stories, museums, weavings and tools left by my grandmothers I’ve started weaving and using older ways to create fiber related utility items. Some thought to have long been forgotten and I seek to reestablish Navajo weaving not as a recent aberration, but as a long tradition within all related tribes and techniques. ​

Hi, My name is Julia Garina (Felt Totes, Nuno Scarf, Felt Slippers). I am an Art Teacher, fiber artist and designer. I fell in love with wet felting 4 years ago and can’t stop exploring different wet felting techniques. During last couple of years, I teach lots of Felting workshops at Flag Wool and Fiber Festival, at Arizona Fiber Arts Retreat. As a designer of Arizona I keep working on creation of wearable art and participate in annual Eco Fashion shows and other runaways, bringing the idea of eco fashion to the world.

Tasha Miller Griffith (Renegade Screenprinting)​At her core, Tasha believes that making things by hand empowers people to live more joyfully andthoughtully. She grew up in a family of self-sufficient makers and tinkerers, has been drawn to textiles of all kinds since she was very small, and is always trying to figure out what makes things work. In her classes, she builds a deep understanding of concepts through hands-on experimentation in a warm and inspiring environment. Tasha teaches nationally at folk schools and fiber arts events, and writes for Taproot and Seamwork magazines. She shares free tutorials on her blog at https://tashamillergriffith.com/ .

Nancy Wilson (Acid Dyeing)Nancy Wilson began spinning shortly after she and her husband Chris acquired their first llamas in 1988, followed by an alpaca in 1993. In 1988 she had an “aha” moment: “These llamas have fiber on them; I need to learn to spin it.” With an educational background in textiles and clothing, spinning seemed a logical next step. Nancy completed her Master Spinner Certification through Olds College in Canada, and her In Depth Study covered blending double-coated llama fiber. She was able to experiment with a variety of dye methods during the course of the program, and her own dye records date back to 2005. She teaches regularly at Flag Wool and Fiber and the Arizona Fiber Arts Retreat and has presented programs and workshops for the Mountain Spinners and Weavers Guild in Prescott and Verde Valley Weavers and Spinners Guild.

Margaret Trousdale (Spin Your Pet's Hair)For nine years, Margaret's been spinning and working raw wools and fibers. Her first fiber pets were a pair of Giant French Angora Rabbits which she bred and raised. She harvested and spun their fur, selling yarns on Etsy and at wool and fiber fests. She's a retired school teacher, active with her guilds in SoCal and New Mexico. She crochets, knits sometimes, and travels with yarn. A native Californian, her home is now Albuquerque, New Mexico. She records her fiber adventures on https://theyarnmarm.blogspot.com/

Lucy Jennings (Frame Loom Weaving/Kids Weaving) studied weaving at Northern Arizona University where she received an MA in Art Education. Her work has appeared in Handwoven magazine, and she has sold her handwoven clothing and beaded jewelry at local and national craft shows. Lucy is an elementary school teacher and has been teaching kids to weave for over thirty years. She’s also taught at Mohave Community College and in workshops at her local yarn shop. You can find her weaving tutorials on her website, www.TheCreativityPatch.com.She lives in Kingman, Arizona where she has two dogs and too much yarn.

Mona Lewis, Wild Inks: Minerals and BotanicalsI am an artist and Handwork teacher. I have been teaching in Waldorf Schools for more that 20 years. (Handwork includes knitting, crochet, sewing, plant dye, and many other things.)​I am currently co-director of the Waldorf Institute Practical Arts Teacher Training Program. We educate future Handwork teachers for Waldorf schools. Our program is nine modules, (each one is 6 days long) and graduates receive certificates that allow them to work as Handwork teachers in any Waldorf School world wide.I have been an avid plant dye aficionado for many years. I love how plants have been used through history to create mesmerizing colors. Using them on paper is a logical continuation of the plant dye discipline, and many of the same skills are employed. I gear my classes toward simple experiences that parents and children will both love and be able to do again at home. My goal is to help artists of all ages, to interact with nature in fun and meaningful ways, and to discover the magical world of color that is all around us.

Michelle Andrus, Round Reed Basket WeavingBasket weaving is near and dear to my heart, I have been making baskets for over 25 years.​Over this time span I have helped many friends (and friends offriends) learn how to weave baskets. Last year, I was approached to teach aclass and it was a huge success, this year I am holding regular classes in SanDiego. While there are hundreds of styles and techniques for basket weaving,round reed is one of my favorites. The reed produces a simple basket that isgreat for learning weaving techniques. It is also easy to work with and feels nicein your hands. My husband and I have a small “hobby farm” in east San Diegocounty. We have Alpacas and grow cotton for FUN. We have an aquaponicssystem for our garden and a variety of other animals that we adore. I am aspinner, knitter, and weaver. I enjoy working with raw materials to turn them intosomething beautiful and useful. I love all things “Homegrown and Handmade”.

Sheramy Scott, Art Yarn SpinningGrowing up, my mom was a hand weaver. She learned to weave in Pennsylvania when I was about four years old, so I really can’t remember a time when fiber art wasn’t a part of my life in some way. I remember lying in bed at night listening to the sounds of her looms: changing harnesses, beating the weft, and that wonderful cranking sound! She also dyed her own yarn, so there was usually yarn hanging from random places to dry and an umbrella swift attached to the table. I got my first inkle loom when I was 7 and also had a cute little table loom when I was 10. However, it wasn’t until October 2014 that I fell down the rabbit hole (you all know the one!) While my husband was deployed, I took my daughters for an extended stay with my parents. I really wanted something crafty to keep my hands busy at their house, so I decided to take up knitting. While looking for new patterns online, I discovered art yarn. I. Was. Hooked. Because of my mom’s influence, the divide between making yarn and using yarn didn’t seem like a very big one to me. All I had to do was ask her. Though she wasn’t a hand spinner, she had a bag of roving and a homemade CD drop spindle in her closet...almost like she was just waiting for me to ask! I spent the next two months pouring over books and YouTube videos and received my first wheel as a gift for Christmas that year. I started dyeing my own fibers in Spring of 2015 and also got my drum carder that year. I officially opened my Etsy shop that Winter. This craft brings me so much joy! From dirty fleece to finished project, there isn’t a part of the process that I don’t love. I hope that shows in this class, and each person leaves with that same joy in their new knowledge and what we create together.

Celeste Nossiter, Knitting the LandscapeAll my life the joy and mystery of color has been my motivating principle, first in painting and now in knitwear design. I have a BA from Brandeis Universityand an MFA from Pratt Institute but after being a starving artist and teachingcollege part-time, I gave up that dream. Twenty years later I discovered Fair Isleknitting. In 2003 a knitting tour of Shetland, Scotland rekindled my creativejuices and I began making my own knitted designs. That sparked an intensive​learning period when I experienced that color in knitting doesn’t work the same way as color on canvas. My greatest joy is sharing my passion with students: helping them translate their personal inspirations into knitted designs. That includes an experiential, hands-onapproach to learning more about color so they can get their desired results. Iteach beginning and intermediate classes in stranded knitting and a playfulapproach to color theory. My heart’s desire is to bring out the inner artist thatexists in everyone through stranded knitting and color study.I teach at yarn stores including The Yarn Store at Nob Hill and Village Wools inAlbuquerque, and Looking Glass Yarns in Santa Fe; Purl in the Pines in Flagstaff,AZ; Vortex Yarns, Taos NM; private studios and festivals including the Taos WoolFestival, Estes Park Wool Festival, Sneffles Fiber Festival in CO, On HigherGround lll Retreat in Taos and Fiber Art Fiesta in Albuquerque. I am the FunEvents Coordinator for The Yarn Store.